With my old computer slowly dying on me, and actually taking half a minute or longer to open any program, it was time to buy a new computer. Three years and 3 months is long enough, especially since my machine is on most of the waking hours of my day (and night).

My son, who is a computer programmer and who now lives here in Sydney, has been urging me to look at what’s available through the online computer auction service at http://www.graysonline.com.au/category.asp?PARENT_ID=3

Actually he went further than that. He found me a beauty. We put in a maximum bid price and let the automatic bidding run. Result: I now have a shiny new Compaq with twice the memory and twice the hard drive capacity as before — and Vista as well — for just over AU$400 delivered to the door.

Talk about a deal.

The auction description said it was refurbished, but my son the computer whiz says it’s never been turned on. No dust in the box. All programs are running as brand new. As you can imagine, we ARE pleased.

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So… I’ve spent the last few days installing the software I cant live without and transferring stuff from the old computer to the new one. I used SyncToy (it’s free) in the end and it worked nicely.

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I’m using this equipment changeover as my prompt to also make the move from Microsoft Word and their related products to the free suite of comparable products from OpenOffice. That’s free, too. Read the rest of this entry